Strategies for Google Shopping

Google Shopping is a growing force in retail advertising. It now accounts for more that half of retailer online advertising spend in the USA. The UK and Europe are catching up quickly. How should you target potential customers using this platform?

Diagnosing Google Shopping Intention

Branded searches perform differently to non-branded searches. This is often because the consumer is at a different point in the buying cycle (research vs purchase intent).

Whilst it is important to get picked up by customers in the early stage (particularly if you are running retargeting ads) it is usually not as cost effective and your bids should reflect the intent of the customer.

Competitive Pricing in Google Shopping

Retailer branding will only carry you so far in Google Shopping. You will eventually need to look at pricing. You will receive more clicks and more conversions if you are price competitive on branded goods.

Certain high-end retailers may be able to charge more for the same products based on customer perceptions of better service quality. However, this will only take you so far. If the cost of a product is substantially different, then your conversion rates will plummet.

Adding Search Terms to Product Titles Brings Benefits

It has long been the case that well-formated product titles are useful in helping search engines find products. The same is true today. Additional keywords in the title, such as an extra description of colour (using the description navy blue rather than simply stating the colour as navy) or the descriptor being changed from dress to party dress may give a boost to the number of impressions that a product can gain in Google Shopping.

Keeping an Eye on Ad Spend

It’s worth remembering that profit margins vary. Set your Google Shopping feed to use individual product ID’s so that you can monitor the cost of sale against the margin available.

Pick your Days and Times Carefully

Conversion rates vary by time of day and by time. To get the lowest cost of sale possible, you will need to optimise spend to occur at the times with the highest conversion.

This is made easier if you split your products into groups of branded and non-branded products as we are able to then identify and continue to bid for research phase traffic.

Dynamic Remarketing

Dropping a cookie on to a visitor to your site is a simple act. It can also be used to continue to advertise the products that were visited. It is worth activating this to allow you to continue to reach these visitors and hopefully recapture them to make a sale.

The current trends indicate that Google Shopping revenue is only going to grow in the next few years, making it vital for retailers to have a strong Google Shopping strategy.